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The War Games

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Doctor Who serial. For the 1965 television film on nuclear war, see The War Game. For the war games in the anime/manga MÄR, see The War Games (MÄR). For the 1983 US movie, see WarGames.

Contents

On an alien planet the Doctor uncovers a diabolic plot to conquer
the universe, with brainwashed soldiers abducted from Earth forced to
fight in simulated environments, reflecting the periods in history from
whence they were taken. The alien's aim is to produce a super army from
the survivors, to this end they have been aided by a renegade from the
Doctor's own race the 'Time Lords'.

Joining forces with rebel soldiers, who have broken their
conditioning, the Doctor and his companions foil the plan and stop the
fighting. But the Doctor admits he needs the help of the Time Lords to
return the soldiers to their own times, but in asking risks capture for
his own past crimes including the theft of the TARDIS. After sending
the message he and his companions attempt to evade capture, but are
caught.

Having returned the soldiers to Earth, the Time Lords erase Zoe and
Jamie's memories of travelling with the Doctor, and return them to the
point in time just before they entered the TARDIS. They then place the
Doctor on trial for stealing the TARDIS and breaking the rule of
non-interference. The Doctor presents a spirited defence citing his
many battles against the evils of the universe. Accepting this defence
the Time Lords announce his punishment is exile to Earth. In addition
the operation of the TARDIS is wiped from his memory and his next regeneration is imposed.

Patrick Troughton later reprised the role of the Second Doctor in The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors.
In the second of these, he expresses knowledge of events of the final
episode of this serial, on the face of it a chronological
impossibility, and in the last he is on an assignment for the Time
Lords, which is incompatible with the events seen here. These facts
gave rise to the Season 6B theory, enabled by the aforementioned lack of on-screen depiction of the regeneration.

The time machines designed by the War Chief and used by the War
Lords are called SIDRATs, an inversion of the name TARDIS. Though this
name is used only once, and then merely in passing, on-screen during
the serial (and pronounced "side-rat")[1],
the expanded acronym is revealed to stand for "Space and
Inter-Dimensional Robot All-purpose Transporter" in the 1979
novelisation by Malcolm Hulke. It is repeated in the Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Exodus by Terrance Dicks, which forms a sequel to The War Games.

For the first time, this serial names the Doctor's race as the "Time Lords". Although his home planet (Gallifrey) is seen, it would not be referenced by name until The Time Warrior (1973). His reasons for leaving Gallifrey, and the fact that he stole the TARDIS, are also revealed.

Aside from the Doctor and Susan, the War Chief is the second person of the Doctor's race (after the Meddling Monk) to appear in the television series.

Again the concept of regeneration is presented but not named in this serial, following The Tenth Planet/The Power of the Daleks. The process was eventually named in Planet of the Spiders,
then retrospectively attributed to the earlier two changes of actors —
first by series fans, then later by the early-'80s production team in The Five Doctors.
Until that point, there was some fan controversy over whether the
Second Doctor had actually regenerated or merely had his appearance
changed.

While Troughton's Doctor is sentenced to a forced regeneration at
the end of this serial, we do not actually see him regenerate into the Third Doctor (who first appears — briefly wearing the Troughton costume — in the next serial, Spearhead from Space). The only other Doctor not to receive an on-screen regeneration is the Eighth Doctor, who has already regenerated into the Ninth Doctor at the start of the 2005 series.

In the first Episode, the Second Doctor kisses Zoe. [1]
This display of platonic affection is the first time that the Doctor
kisses one of his companions, though as the series went on it would be
far from the last.

In the final episode, the Time Lords wipe Zoe's mind and return her
to the Wheel, where she encounters Tanya Lernov, a character from The Wheel in Space. A set from The Wheel in Space was rebuilt and actress Clare Jenkins (Tanya) rehired for this one scene.[2] The Big Finish Productions audio drama Fear of the Daleks
shows an older Zoe having detailed dreams of her adventures with the
Doctor, suspecting that something is blocking her memory, and seeing a
psychiatric counsellor in an effort to understand the "dreams".

This marks the last appearance of the TARDIS Control Room until The Claws of Axos in 1971, though the removed TARDIS console would be seen in the Doctor's UNIT headquarters laboratory in The Ambassadors of Death, and in a hut on the grounds of the titular project in Inferno.

Episode 10 is the last episode of the original series to be produced in black and white.

This serial was released in the UK February 1990 in a two-tape set
in episodic form. It was re-released in remastered format in September
2002. Since this VHS re-release, better quality film prints of the
story have been located at the BFI, and were used for the DVD release.[6] The DVD will be released on July 6th 2009 and is a 3 disc set,[7]
with a commentry provided by Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Philip Madoc,
Graham Weston, Jane Sherwin, Terrance Dicks and Derrick Sherwin.

A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in September 1979, entitled Doctor Who and The War Games.
Despite the length of the serial, Hulke was allotted only 143 pages in
which to adapt the 10-episode script, the third longest Doctor Who serial. By comparison, the later novelisation of the second longest serial, the 12-episode The Daleks' Master Plan,
was published in two volumes, each of which were much longer than
Hulke's book, while four books were used to novelise the longest
serial, the 14-episode The Trial of a Time Lord.

Synopsis

On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok
is almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escapes by
the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species.
She makes it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape
changing tourist aliens, are planning a visit to the planet Earth in
1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stows aboard,
as does Mel,
while the Doctor follows them in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Mel have
won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the
right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner has
the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turn up, ruthlessly
hunting down the fugitive, and they kill the Tollmaster when he refuses
to co-operate.

The holiday vehicle from Nostalgia Tours meets an unfortunate
collision with an American space satellite and is diverted off track,
landing at a holiday camp in South Wales rather than Disneyland. However, the basic but cheerful Shangri-La
holiday camp is happy to accommodate the visitors led by the ebullient
Burton, who assures the travellers of a warm welcome while they wait
for the driver, Murray, to repair their innocuous seeming transport.
Mel gets close to Delta and uncovers the truth of her situation,
including the hatching of the egg into a bright green baby that starts
to grow at a startling rate. The Chimeron Queen supports this
development with the equivalent of royal jelly given to bees.

Delta tries to take her mind off the situation and goes to the
Shangri-La dance, instantly capturing the heart of Billy, the camp’s
mechanic – and making an enemy of the smitten Rachel (or Ray), who
loves Billy herself. Ray confides her situation to the Doctor, and they
both stumble across a bounty hunter making contact with the Bannermen
to tell them of the Chimeron’s whereabouts. It is only a matter of time
before Gavrok and his troops arrive. Delta and Billy head off on a
romantic countryside ramble the following morning, but the Doctor
wastes no time in persuading Burton to evacuate the camp, helping
Murray repair the ship, and then heading off to find the young lovers
while there is still time. Once they are found, everyone returns to the
camp but the situation has become dire. The Bannermen have destroyed
the Navarino bus with all its official passengers inside, taking Mel as
a hostage, as Gavrok tries to work out how to capture the Chimeron. The
Doctor’s early attempts to intercede are futile, but he does rescue
Burton and Mel from the Bannermen.

Two Bannermen are holding prisoner two aging American agents, Hawk
and Weismuller, who were tracking the missing satellite when they first
arrived. The Bannermen were instructed by Gavrok to wait for the
Doctor, Burton and Mel on the side of the road. Just before they left
the Americans, they place a joined head lock device to prevent them
from escaping. While the two Bannerman were placing a tracker on the
Doctor, riding Billy's motorbike with Burton and Mel, in an attempt to
disguise an ambush attempt, Ray manages to rescue Hawk and Weismuller
head locks with an Allen key. They all make contact with the mysterious
beekeeper Goronwy, who hides them for a while in his house.

As the two Bannerman find that the Americans have been set free,
they track the Doctor’s party to Goronwy House. As they were closing in
to the house, the Chimeron child Princess made a high pitched scream of
warning which traumatised the ears of the two Bannermen, allowing Delta
was able to shoot one of them, while the other escaped to inform Gavrok
of the location of Delta and the Princess. At Shangri-La, before
leaving to attack Goronwy House, Gavrok booby-trapped the outside of
the TARDIS
in an attempt to kill the Doctor. As Gavrok and his Bannermen
approached Goronwy House shooting, and crashing into the
rock-and-roll-music-filled house, only to have honey broken over them
in the process. This then set Goronwy's bees on the honey-covered
Bannermen. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and his party made it to
Shangri-La to set up a defence. Billy rigged up the Shangri-La sound
system to amplify the perfectly pitched scream of the Chimeron child
Princess – a sound which is excruciatingly painful to Bannermen.

Goronwy explains to Billy the purpose of royal jelly in the
lifecycle of the honeybee, provoking the mechanic to consume Delta's
equivalent that she has been feeding her daughter, in the hope of
metamorphosing into a Chimeron.

As Gavrok and his band of Bannermen attack Shangri-La, the amplified
scream of the Chimeron princess traumatised the attackers, including
Gavrok, who becomes so stunned that he falls into the beam of the
booby-trap he placed on the TARDIS and is incinerated. Other Bannermen
are so traumatised that they are easily rounded up. Delta and Billy
leave together with the child and the prisoners, heading for an
intergalactic war crimes tribunal. To their delight, The Doctor shows
Hawk and Weismuller the missing satellite nearby. All is well and the
next bus of holidaymakers, this time human, arrive at Shangri-La as the
Doctor and Mel slip away.

Sylvester McCoy can be seen wearing his glasses in certain long
shots of him riding a motorcycle (consequently, the only time the
Seventh Doctor is seen wearing spectacles, though he does produce a
pair for use as an aid to hypnosis in the extended version of Silver Nemesis).

Production

Preproduction

This was the first three-part story since Planet of Giants (1964), not counting the 3 x 45 minute episodes of The Two Doctors,
which had been broadcast 2 years previously, and the first intended to
be this length (Giants had been recorded as a four-parter and cut).

Working titles for this story included The Flight of the Chimeron[5]. The eventual title is a reference to the British band Echo and the Bunnymen. The story title makes a single substitution using the phonetic alphabet and a slight change in the final word of the title.

The character of Ray was originally created as a new companion for
the Doctor as Bonnie Langford had announced she would be leaving the
series at the end of the season. The serial, with the working title, The Flight Of The Chimeron,
was originally scheduled to end the season. However, as the serial
neared production, Langford had not yet decided whether she would leave
at the end of Season 24 or during Season 25; that, plus the
rescheduling of Delta and the Bannermen to earlier in the season and the decision by script editor Andrew Cartmel
to create another replacement companion named Alf (later renamed
'Ace'), led to the idea of Ray as a new companion being abandoned[5].

Casting

Production

The scenes at the Shangri-La holiday camp were shot on location at the Butlins Holiday camp on Barry Island, Wales. The holiday camp is no longer there, but the island was used again, this time as a stand-in for a bomb site in 1941 London, in the 2005 series episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".[6]

The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles.

The guitar the Doctor is seen hugging at the end of the story is a FenderStratocaster, although the model is not one available at the time the story was set.

Commercial releases

The story was released on VHS
in March 2001 in the UK and June 2002 in North America, but music
clearance issues prevented the release of the serial in Australia. A
commentary by Sylvester McCoy, Sara Griffiths, Chris Clough and Andrew
Cartmel has been recorded for the DVD release. The DVD will be released on June 22 2009.